keyestothefuture

Hi Reyu. I'll try and give as detailed answers as possible but be warned in some places my knowledge will be insufficient. Unfortunately most of your questions cannot be answered because, from a scientific point of view, those with eidetic memories simply do not exist. You make reference to Elizabeth, but her results are largely held to be highly inaccurate. You've clearly done your research and you're right; the circumstances surrounding Elizabeth are suspicious and dubious and have not been repeated, which is the hallmark of a scientific experiment. The reason there are so few, I would guess, is because they simply do not exist, at least not in the form that you would expect to find them. I understand that to someone as intrigued with the concept as yourself, this may come as a bit of a disappointment but the fact is that an eidetic memory means to be able to examine an image independantly after it has been removed and this has never really been conclusively observed. HOWEVER. I can still encourage and foster your obsession with knowledge and its accumulation (that obsession in itself is a gift that will last a lifetime). There is a huge community of the mnemonists that you mention in your post, all of whom could be easily seen to have memory capacities that could only be regarded as inhuman. In fact, I would guess that many of them have abilities that extend far beyond what natural born eidetikers would be capable of. They do this through the mind palace. (the memorisation branch of this technique is called the method of loci and works by binding spatial memory to desirable visual information). In using this they can form incredibly long term memories very quickly, some capable of memorising hundreds of digits per minute. It can be adapted to memorise anything, from entire books to dates and events. Whatsmore, this technique is highly documented and very reliable. Even more thrilling, anyone can learn this. It is not even particularly difficult, and the more you use it the stronger it becomes. This can even be tied together with other visualisation techniques, to reportedly (though these feats are less well documented), abolish pain, perform rapid mental calculations of huge numbers and change mood and emotional state. So even though eidetic memory may not exist in whatever state you were hoping to find it, if you start with this technique, I promise it will give you enough to work with for a lifetime. In terms of further reading, Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer is a great start. Message if you have further questions. Regards, Jacob

That's a shame. Nonetheless, thank you for an informative reply.

Photon upconversion is a process by which a substance absorbs two lower eneegry photons and then emits one higher energy photon. This can be used to convert infrared light into visible light. Would it be possible to make panels that passively convert infrared into visible light, and if so which would be the best ions to use? I assume I would need a setup that goes something like: Visible light filter, ions in solution, infrared filter. Thoughts?

I'm not sure what kind of circuit this is. Do you have a circuit diagram you could upload?

Heat is movement at that level so as the wire heats up, the electrons that pass along it move more. As this movement is random (it occurs in all directions), electrons tend to bump into each other and the atoms of the wire more often. This disturbs the flow of electrons. Just think of electrons flow along cold wires as "smooth" and along hot wires as "rough". Hope this helps.

You're welcome. Good luck with study.

First calculate the enthalpy change for the reaction, which will be your delta H value. Then calculate delta S by doing the entropy of the products minus the entropy of the reactants. Multiply that value by 298K (T). Then do your delta H minus that. Hope this helps.

@Velocity yes I agree. Very cool, which is part of the reason I set up this thread. Especially when you consider that you can smell the difference between a molecule 8 carbons long and a molecule 9 carbons long. Coolest sense, and you have two "classical" senses devoted to it, taste and smell. @Function obviously smaller simpler compounds such as carbon dioxide don't have a notable scent, but for the more complex ones, they are often the active agents for many of the aromas in everyday life, like the ones that StringJunky posted. So I suppose a better way of phrasing it would be: List the organic compounds responsible for certain scents. As I said before, trying to assign as many smells to as many molecules as possible.

@Function I agree such a list would be pointless. I apologise for not being clear with my wording. The purpose was not to simply create a list of scents, but rather to create a list of smells associated with certain molecules. For example, butanal always smells like rancid butter and nonanal always smells like roses. My intent was for users to post scents with an associated molecule. I hope I have made this clearer.

Hey everyone basically this is going to be a thread devoted to cataloguing as many smells for organic compounds as possible, to compile a definitive list. The human olfactory system is incredibly powerful, but it is difficult to put your chemoreceptors to good use without knowing what the various scents represent. Allow me to start: Butanal: Rancid butter Octanal: Citrus (oranges) Nonanal: Roses Sorry these aren't more ordered, they're just off the top of my head at the moment. Smell with caution!

It must be possible, but desirable? I'm not so sure. Yes, our bodies have their flaws but they are almost certainly more reliable than machines. On the matter of keeping the brain, why? I read a paper recently saying that a researcher had isolated an enzyme called reverse telomerase, and, with application to human cells, he immortalised them. Might be something worth checking out.

Haha thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to do that first XD

Yeah one of the things that I noticed is that animals such as rabbits for example, which are generally similar enough to humans for most testing purposes, don't have tear ducts, hence why they are used in cosmetic testing so much. Crying seems to be an emotional response in primates. Would be interesting to know whether or not baboons and the like can cry...

Yeah I was aware of the dangers, hence why I was wondering about the strength of amplification. Directional microphone though thats good... Superhearing was a poor choice of words sorry about that. So I guess what I want is some way of making a device that only picks up speech and then only amplifies that?

So now I've got your attention its basically a hearing aid, but I'm not hard of hearing. From what I understand, a hearing aid is comprised of a mic and then an amplifier then a speaker. Therefore even if you're not hard of hearing it should be able to boost your range at least. Thing is I'm worried about interference and the noise becoming low quality. Obviously in busy, noisy places, the microphone will pick up all of the sound and I understand that there's very little I can do about this other than not use it in busy places. But you don't actually want the mic so sensitive it picks up every little sound and amplifies it because then the sound you want to hear, most likely speech becomes inaudible over the background noise. If anything a less sensitive mic would be better, I think. In terms of components, I think I'll see if I can fit the whole thing in one earbud from an old pair of earphones. The other advantage of this is you already have a speaker there. Then you'll need quite a small mic to pick up the sound and then a transistor to amplify the sound? In theory this could all be powered by a 0.7V watch battery. My main problem is with the transistor, so, what strength of transistor would you need. I understand this sounds stupid but is it at all possible to make a device that gives you superhearing?

I assume you're in the US but here in the UK there are courses called MOOC's. I'm not sure whether you could access them but I don't see why not. They're like tasters but they can go in to a lot of detail and I'm almost certain that they'd keep you sharp enough for uni. Alternatively/additionally, you could see the reading list for your university course and then see if you could get these out from a library? Most would probably only let you look at them inside though, as reference material. And if you're saving for uni you probably shouldn't spend the money on buying the books yourself. You can get them really cheap on the internet though, especially from graduates at around this time of year so best to keep your eyes open.

Right so tears release lysosomes/lysozymes, hydrolyse irritant material, flush said material out of your eyes. But why then, do we do this when we are sad. Indeed, how does sadness provide any evolutionary advantage at all? Sadness is, quite possibly, one of the most unproductive emotions out there. Anger gives you strength and drive to action, happiness is widely proven to be good for your health, and it usually comes about as a result of beneficial circumstances, which drives you to put yourself into those circumstances again. But sadness is debilitating. Some people experience it so strongly, they are quite literally bed-ridden. Why does this still exist/why did it develop?